The official Italian Tumblr blog for Torment: Tides of Numenera has added a new interview with inXile Entertainment's Adam Heine about the upcoming spiritual successor to the classic Planescape: Torment fantasy RPG. The interview covers a variety of topics including character design, task challenge, and ways to gain experience in an RPG.

Speaking of character progression, in Numenera you don’t get XPs for killing monsters. You gain experience only through discoveries or GM intrusions, and if you want, you can spend part of this experience in temporary benefits. Some of these features seem like a good match for a CRPG, others don’t. What are you going to keep/change in Torment? And what’s your “ideal” experience system, if any?

First, we aren’t giving XP out for killing enemies. For one thing, it would endanger our “no trash mobs” policy. But also (as Monte Cook points out in the Numenera Corebook), you give out XP when players overcome challenges and make progress toward their objectives—when they do the things you want them to do. Killing enemies is one way to solve some encounters, and in those cases the player gets XP—not because they slaughtered monsters, but because they solved the encounter. If they use their wits instead, they’ll still get XP because the goal is to solve the encounter. That’s what the player should earn XP for.

So in Torment, you’ll earn XP for solving quests and other problems, for unearthing truths and memories, and yes, for making discoveries. How you go about these things can matter (it’s likely you’d get more XP for a more difficult solution, which may or may not involve combat), but the XP is given when the quest is solved or the discovery made.

We’re still talking about ways of adapting GM intrusions. We want to include them, but we’d like them to feel immersive and organic, instead of a pop-up that says: “GM Intrusion! You’re about to drop your sword. Do you allow it? Yes (+2 XP). No (-1 XP).” We’d also like them to be more interesting than dropping your sword ;-)

And we’re going to keep the concept of spending XP on temporary benefits as well as long term ones. Actually, there will be two types of points: XP and what we’re calling Discovery Points (DP). XP is gained through solving Quests and Crises and can be spent on character progression, used to switch Foci (the first Focus switch is free, but it will start costing after that), or converted into DP. DP, then, is gained through discoveries and GM Intrusions (though you may get some for solving Quests and Crises as well), and can only be spent on things like: bonus recovery points, extra Effort for a single task, crafting costs, undoing a character’s most recent action, etc.